HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

alangibson

5,523 karma · joined January 6, 2017

https://twitter.com/handheld
submissionscomments
alangibson··on Global Glacier Extinction Explorer
Agree. It's been my position for a while that we've de facto decided to do nothing to prevent warming and we'll just live with the consequences.
alangibson··on Diesel prices in U.S. top $6 a gallon for first time
Iran said publicly that driving up costs in the USA to effect the coming elections is their strategy.
alangibson··on The Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem
This is not the simplest explanation.

The most direct line from problem to proof is OpenAI building off of conversations the mathematicians had with their AI.

alangibson··on Nvidia's Jensen Huang says 'AGI has arrived' and congratulates OpenAI
Is there actually an agreed definition of AGI? It's always seemed like a marketing term that can mean whatever next quarters earnings need it to mean.
alangibson··on Nvidia's Jensen Huang says 'AGI has arrived' and congratulates OpenAI
NVDA is in bad shape financially? They're making it hand over fist right now.
alangibson··on Three sites made 215,128 “best software” pages for AI. Perplexity cites them
Perplexity is about to learn that Google is an anti-spam company first, search engine second
alangibson··on Alphabet's cash burn raises alarm for Big Tech as AI spending climbs
So the number is irrelevant. No one wants yesterdays newspaper.

The only relevant number is the price to serve a frontier or near-frontier model.

alangibson··on India's surprise baby bust
Kids are definitely a net positive for society. They're future taxpayers.

But that's not relevant to couples choice to get pregnant. I've never heard a parent say they had kids so they can pay into Social Security.

alangibson··on India's surprise baby bust
If you invert the question "why aren't people having kids" to "why did people want kids in the first place" then the fertility crisis makes more sense.

Kids were free labor and old age insurance.

Now they are extremely expensive pets. Materially they are a net negative in a modern society.

alangibson··on Guest Essay: America Cannot Withstand the Economic Shock That's Coming
Paywalled
alangibson··on Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
Yea but every warfighter will get a waifu
alangibson··on Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
It's not named the Department of War because Congress didn't rename it.

Other than that, good on ya.

alangibson··on TikTok's 'addictive design' found to be illegal in Europe
No. Feed-based apps are uniquely bad.
alangibson··on The Sideprocalypse
There's legions of companies that will do warehousing and shipping for you. Definitely costs though.

That's what I mean by margins being a significant difference.

alangibson··on The Sideprocalypse
airtite.shop

Stuff for old men like me

alangibson··on The Sideprocalypse
I got out of software and into physical products a couple of years ago. I wish I could say I was prescient, but honestly it's just so much easier to sell physical items.

Margins are worse, but selling is easier. If you've got a thing you can be sure that someone somewhere will give you money for it.

alangibson··on TikTok's 'addictive design' found to be illegal in Europe
Give a kid a phone with TikTok on it and observe them for a while. It's genuinely upsetting.

They'll spend hours with their heads down just silently looking at the thing. All desire to do anything else just vanishes. Then they freak out when you try to take it away from them.

The only obvious difference between them and someone on fent is the verticality of their posture.

alangibson··on xAI joins SpaceX
It seems straightforward to you because you're ignoring everything that makes this not work.

Here's a big one: you can't put radiators in shadow because the coolant would freeze. ISS has system dedicated to making sure the radiators get just enough sunlight at any given time.

alangibson··on xAI joins SpaceX
It seems straightforward to you because you're ignoring everything that makes this not work.

Here's a big one: you can't put radiators in shadow because the coolant would freeze. ISS has system dedicated to making sure the radiators get just enough sunlight at any given time.

alangibson··on xAI joins SpaceX
> arbitrarily large

Space is not empty. Satellites have to be boosted all the time because of drag. Massive panels would only worsen that. Once you boosters are empty the satellite is toast.

alangibson··on xAI joins SpaceX
Shading does work; JWST does this. However I don't see how you can make it work for satellite data centers. You would constantly be engaging attitude control as you realigned the panels to keep the radiators in shade. You'd run out of thruster fuel so fast you'd get like a month out of each satellite
alangibson··on xAI joins SpaceX
ISS radiators run on water and ammonia. Think about how much a kg costs to lift to space and you'll see the economics of space data centers fall apart real fast. Plus, if the radiator springs a leak the satellite is scrap.
alangibson··on xAI joins SpaceX
Several kW is nothing for a bank of GPUs.

Radiators in space are extremely inefficient because there's no conduction.

Also you have huge heat inputs from the sun. So you need substantial cooling before you get around to actually cooling the GPUs.

alangibson··on xAI joins SpaceX
This. There's no scenario where it's cheaper to put them in space.
alangibson··on xAI joins SpaceX
Either this is a straight up con, or Musk found a glitch in physics. It's extremely difficult to keep things cold in space.
alangibson··on xAI joins SpaceX
[flagged]
alangibson··on [dead]
I suppose they'll use the Rodney King excuse for this one.

The guy we were kicking the crap out of on the ground made all of us afraid.

alangibson··on EU–INC – A new pan-European legal entity
Please Lord don't let the Austrians any where near this. The Notar system is the the closest thing to outright theft by paperwork I've ever seen.

We paid 3K on a 50K plot of land for some dingus to read a contract out loud.

alangibson··on SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation
FFS, everyone has gotten so self serious.

Familiarize yourself with the 'peak male performance' meme and you'll understand my meaning.

Let me make it easy for you: She's killing it in what would appear to be a less than ideal circumstance. She's swatting down people messing with her business while raising a child.

alangibson··on The Target forensics lab (2024)
It's funny to see Reddit posts driving HN posts. There was a viral post about a rather video friendly lady getting politely arrested for shoplifting at Target going around today.

A surprising number of people commented about how Target had made sure they got long sentences by waiting and recording them until they would get serious charges.

Page 1 of 34Next →